Lokians 1: Beyond the End of the World (38 page)

“
Not dead yet,” he coughed.

“
Good…take the rear.”

“
Swain?”

“
Go, boss!”

O’Hara stumbled back to the bay door, took a
look at what remained of Nandy, and set his jaw. Adams was
lifeless, Swain was curled up like a ball, and Day started crying.
O’Hara held back his own tears.

While Franklin readied his explosive,
Fitzpatrick gingerly took the one from Adams, a dark, blue canister
about the size of a soda bottle. Franklin then took the one from
Fitzpatrick and started setting up the timer and detonator.

“
Move out,” the captain
said.

They ran through the large room in a daze. To
their utter dread, they saw it was a place with moving, mechanical
arms built into the walls and ceilings; a factory room fashioned to
build more juggernauts. Several inactive ones lined their
surroundings, but at the far end was a hatch mounted in the wall.
It had no handle, didn’t respond to biorhythms, and was the only
point of entry. The captain pounded his fist against the
closing.

“
Open, you son of a bitch! We end
this,” O’Hara screamed. “C’mon. I know you’re scared, scared of us
Humans!” There was nothing. A pang of fear ran through his stomach.
He feared his anger was going to unleash dozens of juggernauts, but
when nothing happened, he took a breath and yelled again. “Come on,
you pathetic bitch! What kind of all-powerful race are
you?!”

Tears flooded his eyes, and screaming, he
blew it open with sparkling beams. A dozen paces away, his
destination awaited.

Quietly, they boarded a circular platform,
which raised the instant they set feet on it, and stopped at the
floor of the control room, a place resembling a computer’s internal
circuitry. All the glowing, green tubes originated from a mass of
mesh-like fibers, growing out from the center of the room. They
were entangled there, spreading out in spirals over the ceiling,
the floor, through the wall. Behind them, some blue lights
flashed.

Everyone heard the distinct sound of weapons
charging and they spread out. O’Hara caught sight of something at
the far wall; the queen was no more than a large head mounted to
shoulders. She was a brown skull covered in chitin. A large,
squared plate grew from the base of the rear of her skull, and
tubes of blue energy pulsed out to sights unseen. Her eyes were
eight, blue circles of light. The captain was stunned; something
about her was almost Human, or even Thewlian in appearance.

“
You. Humans.” She grumbled in a
monotonous, mechanical voice. “You. Will. Perish.”

Blue beams filled the room like a Laser Floyd
show. The attack took everyone by surprise, and they dove behind
large structures. They, too, were composed of metal and chitin with
varying LED lights. As the lasers walked through the room, O’Hara
noticed they didn’t damage the surrounding structure. Suddenly, he
wondered if their weaponry was sufficient.

“
Set the charge!”

“
On it,” Franklin gasped.

O’Hara and DeReaux danced their way around,
firing at anything, and taking cover, and all in an effort to give
the others time to do their thing. Since the control room, a place
with structures, pillars, and panels that looked like computer
chips, provided areas of cover, DeReaux had time to spot turrets
hidden amidst the tubing. Sick of dancing vertically, he took a
deep breath, relaxed, and fired at the turrets, destroying all of
them in almost no time at all. At the same time, O’Hara vaulted
himself over a metal component and felt a sharp pain in his chest;
the last laser, which died out before doing serious damage.

“
Heh, what can you do with no guns,
bitch?” DeReaux snipped.

Recovering from the agony of fire, the
captain laid into the queen with white-hot fury. His rifle vibrated
gently from the centrifugal force generated by quick revolutions.
Sparks flew from the chitinous skull. It groaned, it moaned, it
sizzled and fried, and finally, O’Hara let off to breath.

“
It’s done, Cap,” Fitzpatrick
blurted.

“
You hear that,” O’Hara yelled. He
wasn’t sure if the thing was still alive, but the eyes glowed.
“You’re dead, bitch!”

“
You. Will. Not. Survive. If. I. Must.
Perish. So. Too. Will. You.”

Then, she laughed a horrible, mechanical
churning.

“
We’re set! Get the fuck out,”
Fitzpatrick yelled. O’Hara back peddled, unleashing flurries of
white lightning. The queen laughed louder and louder until it
became an assault on the ears. “Mother fucker’s stuck,
Cap.”

Aw, shit,
he thought. He spun around
to find the platform wasn’t operating. The queen wasn’t lying; she
was locking them in to die.

“
Listen to me,” he yelled. “The charges
are set! Get to the ship. Go!” Swain came back, demanding an
explanation. “Just run! I’m ordering you, run!”

O’Hara shook his head, firing wildly at the
computer components. He got lucky; when they blew up, the platform
shook loose and started descending. He took a few steps back, gave
the queen the finger, and shoved out of there. They ran out and met
up with the others.

O’Hara griped when wasps came fluttering
towards them. “Oh my God! It doesn’t end….”

Fitzpatrick, DeReaux, and Franklin, who had
nabbed Nandy’s gun, all fired into them. The rude, security drones
were little more than a bother, but they did slow the crew down.
They had less than ten minutes to fall back to the ship, if it was
still available.

They worked hurriedly through the escape
route, and back towards the docking bay. Seemingly, from nowhere,
hoppers leapt onto the scene. They clawed and jumped through the
corridor, a space so tight it actually restricted their agility,
not that DeReaux was worried.

“
Got us covered, Captain.”

Bringing time to a standstill, he picked and
chose his targets, fired at their joints, and immobilized them.
O’Hara burned them to a crisp with his photon rifle. The worn spec
ops crew pounded the pavement and pushed on.

At the dropdown point, Franklin pulled a tube
from his harness, rotated part of it, which made prongs jut out,
pointed it up, pressed a button, and a grappling hook shot into the
ceiling. He told everyone to hang on. It wasn’t easy, but the
object lifted them out. Down more corridors, they finally made it
to the docking bay, where their hearts sank. Fighters had
docked

“
Ass!” O’Hara spat.

End

The captain glared at the enemy. Hundreds of
fighters resembling beetles, hornets, and mechanical variations of
insects glowed intermittently. Their weapons had powered on, and
the Humans were done for.

Screaming from an abrupt change in pressure,
everyone was sent reeling towards the enemy, but they were sucked
out into a void of all colors. Whatever was happening left Phoenix
Crew totally bewildered. Before anyone had the time to venture a
guess, they, too, were sucked by a vacuum. Walls, floors, Lokians,
men, colors, a cat; all manners of images flashed before eyes, and
then there was a stillness coupled with soft, white lights.

“
Good to have you back, Captain,” a
familiar voice said.

O’Hara sat up, incredulous. “Korit! What’s
going on?”

“
No time! Just hold on.”

O’Hara’s men were beside him, safely sealed
in by the airlock. Jostling impacts rumbled throughout the
traveler’s vessel, but it soon stabilized. Korit helped everyone
up, and led them to sickbay, Human and Thewlian doctors started
medical observations. O’Hara pushed someone in a lab coat away. He
called for Korit, but the alien wasn’t there. After a doctor
stripped him of his armor, he was sedated.

****

He awoke in a hospital tent. From the opened
flap, he saw an orange glow. The air was crisp, so he rolled off a
gurney, and stumbled out to see remnants of Horizon. Something was
wrong. He didn’t see the
Phoenix
or
Mittens
, but
there were some shuttles. All of the buildings were dark, too; no
lights shone through windows.

“
Captain O’Hara,” a Thewl
called.

He turned to see Korit. “What the Hell is
going on? Where is everyone?”

“
Everyone is…fine. They will
recover.”

Confusion swam through O’Hara’s mind. He
wasn’t able to make heads or tails of his surroundings. He even
wondered if he had died and was dreaming something
incomprehensible, but that fell to pot when he saw Lay jog out from
another tent. He shook a Thewl’s hand, and the alien turned around
to leave.

“
Korit…how did you save us?”

“
It’s complicated. I think under normal
circumstances you would have been lost to us, but something about
defeating the Lokians changed the norm,” Korit replied.

“
What…what does that mean?”

The alien’s eyes rolled around his head for a
second. “The traveler rounded us up. He piloted the vessel…into
subspace.”

They looked at each other. O’Hara knew Korit
was being truthful, but the alien almost sounded skeptical of his
own rendition. It didn’t make any sense.

“
I thought he couldn’t act directly.
Besides, we weren’t gone for very long,” O’Hara argued. “And, to
top it off, we captured a Lokian to enter subspace!”

“
Technically, you captured a Lokian to
learn of the location of their home world…I believe the
Mutra
can do that of its own accord, but that’s not
important. What is important is that to us, you were gone only an
instant. Where you were…time, in our sense as revolutions around a
sun, held no meaning. At any rate, the traveler told us…something.
I don’t understand it, but you killed the queen…everything is
different now.”

“
Like what,” O’Hara gasped.

“
All I know is that the traveler found
an opportunity. He…used it, so to speak, and helped us to save
you.”

“
Something isn’t right,” O’Hara mumbled
under his breath.

“
Your Admiral approaches.”

The captain looked at Lay. The shadow caused
by his hat’s visor hid his eyes. O’Hara chewed his lip; he still
felt discombobulated, but he hoped the admiral had some
information.

“Morning, Admiral,” O’Hara said and
saluted.

He didn’t return the salute. Instead, he
removed his hat and tucked it in his armpit, shaking his head.
O’Hara lowered his arm. Korit looked them over, thanked them, and
walked off, leaving the Human stunned.

“
We have a problem, son,” Lay said,
gravely.

“
You’ve got to be kidding me,” he
grumbled. “What could it possibly be?”

“
News of our break in the social order
reached Earth HQ,” Lay replied.

Social order
, O’Hara wondered. “What?
What are you talking about?”

“
Someone leaked Intel to Earth about
meeting and working with Thewls.”

“
Only the colonists knew, and your
men...how and why would they have contact with Earth?”

“
That’s a good question. Unfortunately,
we’re being shut down,” he huffed. “You’re a God damned hero, but
you’ll be returning to the
Phoenix
. Our lovely leader wants
you to return the colonists to their former homes.”

Such a welling of hate and anger flooded
O’Hara’s body. He was crushed, enraged, confused. Questions poured
out of him.

“
What leader? What are you talk about,
Admiral? What the Hell is going on, here?”

Lay took a long inhalation, cocking his head
to the side. He looked the captain up and down. For a moment, he
played with his teeth.

“
Listen, son. I don’t like it any more
than you do. Fact is, I’m being forced into retirement because of
this. You saved all life in the galaxy, maybe the universe, but the
President wants his way. He’s got all the governments united
against us. Horizon colony is officially shut down.”

“
I’m, I’m…at a loss,” he said, shaking
his head. “Retirement? Why does the President want to shut us down?
What about my crew?”

“
I won’t lie to you,” Lay answered.
“We’re lucky they don’t have us Court-Martialed. As far as the
President…that’s a sketchy story. You ought to be leery of the
grandson of a man who had some serious pull; some kind of ties with
a grove club or something; doesn’t matter, now.

“
At any rate, you can keep your
helmsman, but your crew is being reassigned, and the Thewls are
going home. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Admiral John Lay finally saluted, stuck his
hat back on his head, turned about face, and marched out of sight.
The captain reeled. He had received a direct blow to everything he
stood for, everything he had been taught, and everything he
believed.

“
Sir?” he called. “Sir? You’re just
going to walk away like that?”

The captain ran barefoot for a moment. He
then realized he was wearing some white spandex, but nothing else.
A brisk wind bit his wounds.

“
Hey,” Adams and Franklin
said.

He turned to gawk at them. Adams’s face was
bandaged, and he was missing an arm. Franklin was limping, but
otherwise fine. Involuntarily, he shrugged.

“
Yes, Sir. We’re aware of the
developments,” Adams said.

“
I-I lost everything. I lost the
admiral. I lost my crew. I don’t know what to do.”

O’Hara was shaking with contained rage.